On this day no smoke obscured the view, the roar of cannon and musket were replaced by the whisper of the wind. The ominous muzzle of Union cannon stared at me across the ravine, but no death and destruction had issued from them within the living memory of man. Black Vultures circled high in the sky by while their distant ancestors may have feasted on human flesh. These carrion birds would likely sup on nothing more gruesome than road-killed armadillo.

Do spirits still haunt this battlefield? Some say they do. Certainly there still a few forgotten bones buried somewhere in the ravine below. But today only memories, visual images pulled from the pages of history books, people the landscape below. ​These images remind me that this place where I sit in peace today was once a place of bloody carnage where lives were sacrificed so that the nation we know today could exist.​My dog grows restless. He wants to move on, to smell the deer cropping and trace the path of other woods' creatures that have passed this way. I get up and we start back the way we came.